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Stephen Hundley: Three Poems February 2019

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Stephen Hundley was raised on the Lincoln River, south of Savannah, Georgia. When the weather was right, you might have found him in a clawfoot tub on the porch. When the game warden wasn’t around, you might have found an alligator in the tub too. Stephen’s love for wildlife has inspired writing that mozies from peacocks to herons to mudfish to the dogs living in the woods behind the E-Z Fill. He has been bitten by most things that crawl, swim, or amble, but he doesn’t often bite back.

We’re working on the formatting with this post. Trying to fix the fubarred truncated text. Bear with us, or Mule With Us. Note: text formatting works on a computer. It does not work well (yet) on cellphone or tablet.

Lotto

Grass a drag up to my knees and sharp eyed for something there.Pecans chitter in the bucket. Heft it high. Winter’s clicking haul. Spin the handle over your head and let them cling to the bottom. Give it a shake—see them hop like bait in a cage. From the yard,hear the vacuum chamber’s whirring and the number balls afloat.Ginny’s voice all ice in a glass and chiming the whim of the Fateswhile the sucking machine draws them out: balls 42 and 9 and on. They may be stones in a tumbler. Hewn from a number. Set aside Rose quartz and pecans to slide into the pockets of your coat andblue jeans. And grandfather watching the numbers in their shute,and hearing the stones roll knowing he’ll want something to holdwith faces smooth to the touch. And me, heaving the bucket backto set where grandmother smokes and paints her toes a cherry red.The three of us in the house with the counters cleared for pie pansand the television turned to Ginny Waters and the Powerball. Shecalling those beauties one at a time while we work over a bucket,Grandma cracking two-a-hand. Tonight I know, Ginny assures us,somebody’s life is gonna change.

Heirloom

There are a good many melt holes,lurid and bright. The yellow insulation winking through.

I’m glad for them.The clinging film of nicotine,the deep and foggy stink. This one here:

A pool in the arm rest.You must have laid that Bad Johnny down.There must have been a flame. I betyou like to shit.

They could be constellations.Little stars you made with the habits of your life. And they all have names.

Dad’s wide belt / Copperhead meets Grandmain the garden. See the hoe risen. See the hoe fall. You can follow them like wormholeswith your fingers picking hard-melt plastic

in the seats. The visor. The panel of the door. I found channels risenwhelps and leading through the upholstery,

small enough for ants to use.I’ll have to sell this car for parts or else make for the highway orwherever you are.

Jimmy’s Place

Behind Jimmy’s place there is a pack of dogs come wagging from the pines / comeroaming and milling / come to eatwhite rice from a trashcan lid,

fish heads from a candy dish / from oil panslittering the ground. Tonight they are piled at my feet / full and hard asleep

while Jimmy and the highway house folksthe old and green shrimpersin their first winter on the water / come to burnwhat they can and to drink / while it is burning.

A mattress has been offered alongside a computer chair / The drop-limbs we have gathered for the stack. Jimmy passes out liquor. / I have marshmallows

in powdered lemonade. The people gather close. The many children pet the many dogs, and the cold really setting in now with

all of us watching the flames grow / edging tighter and Jimmy, circus man, withtiger tattoo and nameless dogs and depthless knowledgewill tell a tale from someplace warm

and throw borax laundry powder into the flames. We all wince and cry at the emerald flash while Jimmy laughs / says: Look here! A genie!

But in the green light I forgot to wish. Saw only: Jimmy in the dream flames licking, crushing,boiling a computer chair to nothing,